{"id":756363,"date":"2024-10-11T06:43:07","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T05:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/?p=756363"},"modified":"2024-10-14T12:05:59","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T11:05:59","slug":"grandorge-architectural-precedents-are-worth-interrogating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/grandorge-architectural-precedents-are-worth-interrogating","title":{"rendered":"Grandorge: Architectural precedents are worth interrogating"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">T<\/span><span class=\"s1\">he photograph shows a room at this year\u2019s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which has been held every year, without interruption, since 1769. A visitor, intentionally or otherwise, seems to have done her best to fit in to her surroundings. At the moment the shutter of the camera was released, she was discussing a model on the repurposed shelf above her with her friend standing at her right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The model, shown only partially, is a 1:20 scaled simulacrum of a corner of an automated storage facility designed by Herzog &amp; de Meuron for Ricola, a Swiss company which makes herbal sweets. The building\u2019s elegant and layered skin was derived from the simple idea of stacked wooden boards that can be seen both inside and outside of the timber mills in its locale.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The architectural historian and writer David Leatherbarrow has observed that, \u2018the outer skins of many buildings by Herzog &amp; de Meuron are dependent on the clear understanding of the artificial nature of materials\u2019. The storage building, completed in 1987, adhered to this notion. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The model was made by three students studying architecture at post-graduate level. The fibre cement panels that adorn the fa\u00e7ade of the building were used in three carefully defined sizes so there would be little waste. They were translated in grey card, each element carefully cut by hand. The timber supports that held them up were also modelled in a very precise manner.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The diminutive cast concrete volume at the corner of the building was placed there to protect the fragile fa\u00e7ade elements from vehicular traffic. This was a very poetic and pragmatic response to address a very ordinary and functional problem. The students represented this small concrete mass with a much smaller block of plaster that was cast, again with great precision.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">They discovered some useful things by making drawings of the building at many scales and making a model of it. Firstly, that the setting out of the fa\u00e7ade did not relate to the setting out of the steel structure behind it, which was pre-defined by the programme that it was supporting. Also, that screws and nails are better fixed in the cross-grain of wooden elements, rather than their end-grain. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">One of the students also noticed that Thomas Ruff\u2019s well-known photograph of the project (that was made by joining together two scans of large-format film that were exposed to light by a professional photographer who lived nearer to the project depicted), had gently distorted the proportions of the building that it was representing in two dimensions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Five other industrial buildings from the 20th century, most of them designed by very notable architects, were interrogated in a similar fashion by other students in the studio. This was an opportunity for them to learn about the progression of materials used in this functional type, how their structures were set out, how their spans were achieved and the historical eras in which they were built.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">It is still useful too for students studying architecture to look at the past to address how we design for our collective future.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>David Grandorge is a photographer and senior lecturer in architecture at London Met. His fee for this column has been donated to support the publication of new and diverse voices in the AJ<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The photograph shows a room at this year\u2019s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which has been held every year, without interruption, since 1769. A visitor, intentionally or otherwise, seems to have done her best to fit in to her surroundings. At the moment the shutter of the camera was released, she was discussing a model on &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81397,"featured_media":756368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[702],"tags":[1795,76340,4930,4668],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Grandorge: Architectural precedents are worth interrogating<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It is still useful for students studying architecture to look at the past to address how we design for our collective future, reflects David Grandorge\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/grandorge-architectural-precedents-are-worth-interrogating\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grandorge: Architectural precedents are worth interrogating\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It is still useful for students studying architecture to look at the past to address how we design for our collective future, reflects David Grandorge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/grandorge-architectural-precedents-are-worth-interrogating\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Architects\u2019 Journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-10-11T05:43:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-10-14T11:05:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.emap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2024\/09\/19103729\/RA_Summer_Exhibition_2024_DG_18-1024x726.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"726\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Grandorge\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"David Grandorge\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/grandorge-architectural-precedents-are-worth-interrogating\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/grandorge-architectural-precedents-are-worth-interrogating\",\"name\":\"Grandorge: Architectural precedents are worth interrogating\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-10-11T05:43:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-10-14T11:05:59+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e8f07094a9e00b4d6537f99796004c0b\"},\"description\":\"It is still useful for students studying architecture to look at the past to address how we design for our collective future, reflects David Grandorge\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/grandorge-architectural-precedents-are-worth-interrogating#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/grandorge-architectural-precedents-are-worth-interrogating\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/grandorge-architectural-precedents-are-worth-interrogating#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Grandorge: Architectural precedents are worth interrogating\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Architects\u2019 Journal\",\"description\":\"Architecture News &amp; 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